Komphela urges Sundowns to show character after Super Cup loss

Mamelodi Sundowns must respond to their 3-1 defeat by USM Alger in the Caf Super Cup final, senior coach Steve Komphela says.

Sundowns suffered their first defeat of the season in all competitions at Loftus Versfeld on Sunday, just weeks after their surprise elimination in the Champions League preliminaries.

Komphela said the setbacks would test the character of the squad as they look to recover in the coming weeks.

“This is how your character gets built. And I don’t think we are the first ones to go through this, and we are not going to be the last ones,” Komphela told the media in the mix zone after the match.

The coach pointed to the experience within Sundowns’ squad and technical team as a source of confidence following the defeat.

“Sundowns has been in situations where we needed to dust ourselves and show character. We have a great dressing room with experienced players, and a technical team that’s strong enough and that has a way to focus on what has to be looked at. As they always say, this is breakfast for champions.”

Komphela also revealed that a USM Alger player had offered encouragement to the Sundowns players immediately after the final whistle.

“It’s funny because as soon as the match came to an end, one of the players from USM Alger came through and said something very strange. He said, ‘You guys are a big team, you will recover.’ For me, that was profound. Sometimes in life, we need reminders about who we are and this is the one,” he said.

Although Sundowns had wanted to lift the trophy, Komphela said they would not allow the disappointment to affect their focus on the challenges ahead.

“We wanted to win it, unfortunately, it couldn’t fall our way. You don’t want to start throwing forward and get paralysed by the fact that you start looking at things that are coming.

“But where we are, we are hurting and also for our supporters. And the fact that you are the Champions League winners, when you play folks who are also winners, but in the Confederation [Cup], logic or common sense or expectation would be Champions League winners should win and sometimes football is not like that. We regret the result, we wanted it different. Unfortunately, it did not come our way.”

Cardoso highlights difficult preparation

Sundowns coach Miguel Cardoso said the team had faced an unsettled build-up to the match, with Nuno Santos forced out during the warm-up before striker Bryan Leon had to be replaced after only 15 minutes.

“Of course, we can only speak about a very unfortunate match played in tricky circumstances. It is not normal that we lose a player during warm-up, where we should be preparing them to start,” Cardoso told reporters at his post-match press conference.

He added that Sundowns had also been punished for errors during the final.

“I think we also made mistakes that at this level are penalised by goals.”